


Planet Earth is Blue

by doctorbuffypotterlock79



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: F/F, Happy Ending, Lesbian AU, Mild Angst, Space AU, implied PTSD, mentioned death, mild medical stuff, no actual science was involved in writing this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:29:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22559467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorbuffypotterlock79/pseuds/doctorbuffypotterlock79
Summary: Brooke is an astronaut making her way back to Earth, reflecting on loneliness and the mysterious woman in a bar back home she can't stop thinking about.
Relationships: Brooke Lynn Hytes/Vanessa Vanjie Mateo
Comments: 12
Kudos: 30





	Planet Earth is Blue

**Author's Note:**

> The very basic premise of this is inspired by the short story "The Second Kind of Loneliness" by George R.R. Martin. It is a little experimental, and with that being said, I would really appreciate some feedback on this. Thank you to Writ for betaing and always encouraging me, you're the best <3 <3\. Title from Space Oddity by David Bowie because I’m basic.

The emptiness of space stares at Brooke Lynn Hytes, and she stares right back. 

She’s alone as her ship nears home, though she wasn’t supposed to be. She’s not even supposed to be in the captain’s chair. But in some ways, it suits her. Loneliness always has. 

Loneliness is easier in space. Understandable, even. Who could look at such blackness, spreading in every direction, never ending, and _not_ feel lonely, like just a speck of dust? 

But on Earth, there’s no excuse. There’s no excuse for sitting in noisy bars, watching people laugh and dance and connect, and not having the words to join them. No excuse for watching people buy each other drinks, watching hands creep toward each other across a sticky bar table, watching people walk out arm-in-arm to go home together, to share a warm bed, and going home alone. There’s no excuse for being lonely when companionship and friendship are mere feet away, taunting her.

Brooke would sit and stare at her empty glass, her insides emptier than all of space, before going home to her empty apartment, not even a cat or dog running up to see her, because what would she do with it during long training hours and the time spent up in the stars?

She fiddles with the controls, making sure the ship is at the proper angle to re-enter Earth, blinking to restore her blurry vision. She’s been awake for three days, no one to trade sleeping shifts with, no one in the empty seat next to her. 

She hasn’t cried since it happened. Since Captain Rogers went out on the ship to make repairs and his tether snapped, sending him out into space, nothing to stop his drifting. Mission control wouldn’t want her to cry. Emotions aren’t supposed to get in the way of the mission, aren’t supposed to cloud her judgment. _Nothing_ is supposed to get in the way of the mission. It’s why they encouraged Brooke and Rogers not to form any relationships once mission planning began, not to have any strings on Earth that could be severed in the mission.

Brooke obeyed, not that it was hard for her to do so. It was easier, really, to say that she was sitting and watching people talk while staying silent herself because she had an important space mission coming up, rather than having to call herself a failure for not knowing what to say to someone. For saying the wrong thing so many times that she no longer bothered to say anything at all. There’s no one to say anything to in space. Space doesn’t listen. 

Brooke obeyed, but Rogers--he had a wife and a young son, a family that expected him to come back, had probably counted down the days, until a call from the space center made the countdown worthless. He had a picture of them pinned to the dash. Brooke couldn’t bear to have them smiling at her anymore, and put it in her suit for safekeeping, to bring it home to a family that won’t be smiling like they are in the picture. A family who will miss him and who, even if they won’t admit it, will somewhere deep down always resent Brooke for being the one who survived. But she understands. 

She resents herself too. 

There would have been no one to miss her, no one to even know she was gone. The only person who might notice at all is A’keria, bartender at the bar Brooke goes to every Thursday, who gives Brooke a root beer and a little bowl of pretzels and asks how she’s doing. Brooke wonders if A’keria has noticed her missing the past month, if she felt the urge to grab a bottle of root beer on Thursdays. If Brooke can pretend she’s that important. 

The real reason she goes back to the bar isn’t for the root beer or pretzels or ambiance--noisy, but a little less crowded than most bars, not as much neon decor--but because of the woman that’s always there. She’s friends with A’keria, and Brooke knows her name starts with a V, because that’s what A’keria calls her. Sometimes Brooke lets herself wonder what V stands for. Victoria, maybe, or Valerie? But somehow they don’t seem to fit. 

V has become part of Brooke’s orbit, the sight of her at one of the tall bar tables on Thursdays restoring the axis of Brooke’s frantic mind, keeping herself and the world in place. Sometimes V even appears in Brooke’s dreams, leaving Brooke’s arms empty and aching after V was nestled inside them in the dream. 

V is the kind of person everyone wants to know. The kind of person who alters the world and people around her, the kind of person whose presence will always induce smiles and laughs and hugs, her absence felt, things boring and lifeless without her. The kind of person who would leave you laughing at something she said days later, trying some new food because you saw how wide her eyes got when she ate it and wanted to experience the same joy yourself, though it won’t compare to the joy V brings. V would leave an imprint, on hearts and in the places she went, even the bar stool she sits on soaking up some of her magic, any beds she slept on bearing her imprint, the pillows smelling like her days later. 

Brooke leaves no imprint in her own bed, the mattress still smooth and unchanged after she tosses and turns on it. She leaves no imprint anywhere, her body wispy and hazy rather than solid. Sometimes she wonders if she’ll go to grab something one day and have her hand pass right through it. She doesn’t make up someone’s world, and she doesn’t let people in hers. Safer, that way. Easier. Especially in her line of work. But Brooke doesn’t know if she’ll be in this line of work much longer. She doesn’t know if she can do this again, if she can stop hearing Rogers scream over her ear comm, stop having her muscles seize up like they did when she accepted she couldn’t help him. If she’ll ever be able to stop seeing him float away, grasping at the stars desperately. If she can let her feet leave solid ground again.

Brooke sighs and rubs furiously at her eyes. Maybe the sleep deprivation is messing with her head. They’ll test for that back home. There will be all kinds of evaluations when she gets back. Physical and psychological and technological. Brooke honestly doesn’t know if she’ll pass any of them, but she can’t quite bring herself to care. She’s tired. She’s so tired. 

The ship dips into Earth’s atmosphere, and as the ship rocks back and forth all Brooke can think is that she’ll get to see trees again. Short trees, skinny trees, big, thick trees with wide branches like the ones Brooke used to climb when she was a kid, the entire world in her view when she was perched atop a sturdy branch. Bright green trees offering shade from summer sun and trees with golds and oranges and reds swaying like jewels and trees bare except for a dusting of sugary snow. 

The ship touches down and slides through the muddy field, jostling her in the captain’s seat. She crawls out of the ship and onto grass, and she pulls off her gloves to feel the soft, springy grass under her fingers. Brooke rips her helmet off and sucks in Earth’s air for the first time in weeks, the pure oxygen overwhelming, making her chest feel like it’s about to burst as the collection team, led by Yvie, heads over to her. 

“Major Hytes?” Yvie asks. 

Brooke registers that Yvie’s mouth is moving, but she can’t make her own mouth answer. The world is too bright, too loud, her ears ringing and eyes burning. She tries to stand but gray swoops into her vision, and she drops back to her knees, swallowing back the bile rising in her throat. It’s all too much, the feeling of being back on Earth, being _home_ , too much for her body to stand. 

“Major Hytes--Brooke?” Yvie asks, her features softening when she sees how badly Brooke is shaking. She comes closer and Brooke throws herself at Yvie’s skinny legs, needing something to hold, something to feel, to prove that she’s here, that she’s solid and no longer weightless in space. 

“Hey, Brooke, it’s okay.” Yvie reaches down and gently tucks Brooke’s hair behind her ears, a gesture Brooke never thought she’d see from Yvie, who rarely leaves her engineering office, and maybe it’s the mere presence of a human, of a human touch, but tears spring in her eyes. “They’re gonna take care of you, okay? Everything’s gonna be fine.”

More people come rushing toward her, helping her up and leading her to the van that will bring them back to base. She can hear them talking, but vaguely, like she’s listening from underwater, as they help her sit in the van. 

Yvie sits next to her, in the seat where Rogers should have been, and Brooke wishes her mouth would work to thank Yvie for sparing her from another empty seat. 

Someone holds a water bottle to her lips. Brooke takes one sip and pulls her head back, body curling in on itself as she throws it all back up. She’s still shaking, still struggling for breath, even as Yvie pats her knee, which is comforting though Brooke can’t feel it through her heavy suit. The rest of the team exchange worried looks as they help her into base and set her up in a medical bed. 

They remove her suit and all the layers underneath, until Brooke is shivering in her thin base layer and Yvie’s assistant, Scarlet, wraps a blanket around her trembling shoulders. 

The med team swarms her bed, shining a light into her eyes that’s so bright it makes her flinch backward, talking about blood pressure and mental state, all the tests they need to do—

“Can’t you give her a damn minute?” Yvie shoots dirty looks at them all. 

One of the med team looks at her questioningly, and Brooke just nods, barely a second passing before there’s a thermometer under her tongue and a blood pressure cuff slithering around her arm and a cold stethoscope against her chest making her teeth chatter. 

“Temp’s 99.1, probably a stress response—”

“Blood pressure’s high—”

“Set up an IV line—”

Brooke closes her eyes as the murmurs continue, and she sleeps for the first time in days. 

\---

Opening her eyes to the glaring white room is like opening her eyes in space for the first time, everything bright and strange and scary. Her mind lags for a few seconds before she remembers she’s home, on solid ground. She presses her call button and a doctor comes in, checking her monitors and scribbling on his chart. He says that she has the IV to rehydrate her but they’d like her to try food, just some Jello, before they run more tests. Brooke refuses, her stomach twisting at the thought of putting anything in it, but when they say she can pick the flavor she relents, a tray with strawberry Jello and a spoon set in front of her.

She and Rogers would talk about what their first meals would be when they got back, when they could eat real food instead of the freeze-dried rations, when they didn’t have to stay under a certain weight. Brooke’s answer would change daily: Pizza with a crispy crust and extra cheese dangling off the sides. A thick cheeseburger, juice dripping down her wrists, beside a mountain of golden, crispy French fries that were soft and pillowy inside. A stack of fluffy pancakes drowning in syrup, chocolate chips inside warm and melted. 

Now, she picks up her spoon with unsteady hands—so small and frail-looking without her thick gloves—and blindly scoops up Jello so tasteless she might as well be eating the plastic container it’s in. 

For a few days, it’s like she’s exchanged one ship for another. The bed is just as small and cramped and suffocating, and Brooke is trapped inside it, tethered by her IV, unable to get up unless a doctor or nurse is with her, and she nearly cries with relief when they say her vitals are normal and she'll be discharged after the psych evaluation. 

They send in another doctor for the psych evaluation. Brooke tonelessly gives the answers she knows they want. She passes, but when she’s discharged a few hours later, Yvie discreetly slips her business cards for a therapist and a psychiatrist. 

Brooke leaves and she’s unsure if she’ll ever be back. She can quit, she can resign due to health reasons, teach college kids or work in a damn planetarium, but she doesn’t think she can do this again. She doesn’t want to work for a place where crying compromised a mission, where they tell the public she’s doing excellent after the mission, rather than saying Brooke still hears Rogers screaming because then she would ruin their image. 

She brings the picture to Rogers’ family and apologizes until her voice goes hoarse, but his wife won’t hear a word of it. She wraps Brooke in a fierce hug and tells her not to blame herself but to go out there and live. 

There’s a lot of love and laughs to be had in this universe, a lot of living to be done, and Brooke thinks she owes it to Rogers—owes it to _herself_ —to finally do some of that living. 

Brooke takes an Uber to A’keria’s bar, the only possible place she can think of being tonight, because she can’t sit in her bare apartment. She needs the noise, needs the people, after all those days of silence, of an empty ship and even emptier space in front of her. 

She slips out of the car and gasps as she looks up at the stars, heart light like she’s seeing them for the first time.

Up in space, the stars are different, bigger and brighter and more beautiful than you can imagine on earth. Close enough to touch, to reach out and grab a piece of starlight. But maybe they’re too close. Maybe you aren’t supposed to be so close to something that beautiful, because eventually, what stole your breath the first time you saw it just becomes the background as your ship moves through space, completely unremarkable and even boring after a few days. 

Down on Earth, the beauty stands, as you look up and imagine being among the stars. Down here, they aren’t close enough to touch. They are just close enough to dream, and maybe in this case, the dream is better. 

V is the first thing Brooke sees when she opens the door, the world righting itself, all the confusion and frustration swirling inside Brooke calming down. 

She’s prettier than Brooke has ever seen her, like she’s infused with starlight, brown hair soft and shiny, smooth skin glowing under the dim lights. She tosses her head back in laughter and Brooke feels some urge, like she knows everyone around V does, to be in on the joke, to laugh with her. 

Brooke makes her way across the room, heart pounding as she nears the table. She looks right into V’s eyes, a warm brown that burns with the light of all the stars, and Brooke can see the two of them reflected in her gaze, going on museum trips and kissing under the stars, making Brooke forget the world was ever empty when she’s in V’s embrace. 

“I’m Brooke,” Brooke says, face flushing red as V smiles, as she shoos away her friend and asks Brooke to sit.

“I’m Vanessa.”

 _Vanessa_. Brooke can’t speak, because of course the name she didn’t think of is the perfect name, one that fits her wide grin and rosy cheeks so perfectly. Vanessa. 

“I, uh, I’ve seen you here before,” Vanessa continues. “Miss Root Beer, right?” She laughs nervously. 

Brooke smiles. “That’s me.” 

“You haven’t been around,” Vanessa says, almost sadly, and Brooke’s heart nearly stops. Vanessa has not only seen her, but _noticed_ her, expected to see her and was disappointed when she didn’t. 

“Yeah, I, um, I was on a long trip,” Brooke says.

“Anywhere exciting?” 

_Space_ , Brooke thinks. But she doesn’t want to do this right now. Next week she’ll call the number on those cards and make the appointments, try to talk to a therapist, but for now she just wants to be Brooke, happy and talking to someone on Earth, not lost in the stars. 

“Nope,” Brooke says. “Do you—do you want to grab some pizza? There’s a place down the street.” Her heart is jumping in her chest as the offer flies out of her mouth. Her heart rate was slower when she was launched into space, for crying out loud. 

“I’d love to.” Vanessa pulls on her red leather jacket and bounds over to Brooke’s side, following her out the door. 

“Damn.” Vanessa pulls ahead of Brooke and whistles once they get outside. “Look at those freaking stars. They’re so pretty tonight.” 

“Yeah, they are,” Brooke agrees, but her eyes are fixed firmly in front of her.


End file.
